Motiga reveal their 2016 Gigantic roadmap following the game’s delay

At the beginning of this month Gigantic developer Motiga announced that the game was being pushed back to 2016, and due to the delay, some staff were let go.

Motiga’s creative director and VP of product development James Phinney has posted a new development roadmap update which looks back at the achievements in 2015 and their plans for Gigantic in 2016.

Next year a brand new beta build will be released and more players will be added to the closed beta test. Other improvements coming the game include:

Improved matchmaking algorithms that do a better job creating balanced teams. (Of course, this will mean longer wait times for you if you use the new party mechanics to make a super-team. We don’t want you core guys steamrolling new players!)

Major changes to the way power is generated for Guardians for more interesting and competitive matches. We’ve focused the game on active play by rewarding more power from kills and a new power orb mechanic and less on passive factors like power generation from creatures.

Big content updates, including a second map (Sanctum Falls, formerly known as “MistForge”), a new hero, and a new summonable creature. The naga guardian Grenn will also be showing off new and improved visuals and abilities.

The first parts of our account progression system, where we’re working to make it fun to earn and unlock rewards as you play. This version is just a first iteration, but I think you’ll see we’ve designed a reward system that is fun and complements the overall play experience.

Numerous gameplay adjustments to improve playability. This includes a lot of work to bring joy back into moving around in Gigantic, with reduced stamina costs for sprinting, the removal of penalties for jumping when out of stamina, and much simpler, cleaner collision in our maps.

A third map called Siren’s Strand will be added early next year, more heroes will be added, Roland with his shotgun and grappling hook will return, and new creatures will be added to summon including “slime” creatures.

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the game next year according to Phinney.

“For the rest of the game, there is a tremendous amount of polish still needed. Simple things like camera shakes and impact sounds are all being revised, and we have a massive in-game UI reboot on the horizon as well.Gigantic can and will feel much better in the months to come. For the last year, our UI team has been occupied with the Windows 10 and Xbox One conversions and with laying the foundation for progression systems. Soon we hope to cut them loose on the in-game UI, and we know that will make great improvements to the player experience.

“After that, we will move forward with the numerous social and competitive features that Gigantic will need in the long run, features like Guilds, Leagues, Tournaments, and Spectator mode. We’ve done some work to lay the foundation for these, but it will be some time before they are ready for release. We need to address core gameplay and other fundamental features first.”

In conjunction with the roadmap update, a Reddit AMA was also held answering more community questions.